Mom and I had always talked a great deal. She was used to a lot of energy behind my words as well as my physical movements. She told me later that it had been painful to see me devoid of either one.
Martha soon left for Paris, promising to have a piano in the apartment by the time I returned. I had been talking to Mom about the Italian Riviera, suggesting that we should go down there for a change of scene. She was reluctant to leave Menton with me in a semi-invalid condition but, against her better judgment, agreed to go.
I don’t remember much about the train trip to Viareggio, but I do remember being disappointed in the hotel. It was less comfortable than the du Parc, the staff didn’t seem unduly concerned about my welfare, and our room was damp and cold. Nevertheless, I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to visit nearby Pisa, with its Leaning Tower, and persuaded Mom to take the bus tour from the hotel.
The trip was moderately bumpy, which meant that it took all the muscular exertion I could manage just to stay in my seat. My back was already tired by the time we reached the town and started out on foot to see the cathedral with its Michelangelo door. I insisted we find a medal for Nana, which took us another few steps.
About that time, my back progressed from being simply tired to being unbearably tired. It was the kind of fatigue that had become all too familiar since the polio attack. I can only describe it as similar to the way your arms can ache when you’re holding something heavy up in the air, and it becomes too agonizing to hold it another second.
I put my hands around in back and tried to give my back muscles the illusion of support—a gesture that was to become familiar in the coming years. But it didn’t help.
“I’ve got to lie down,” I muttered to Mom, who glanced at me with a frightened look. My tone of voice sounded tense with a tinge of desperation. I hadn’t meant it to come out that way, but the extreme physical ache left me without a margin for voice modulation. I had reached the point where it didn’t matter where I was or who might be watching. I had to lie down.
Mom looked around hurriedly, but there was only the sidewalk. She took on her emergency attitude—quiet resolution, betraying her inner turmoil only by a slight tremble in her voice.
“You’ll just have to lie down here, then,” she said, steadying me while I flattened myself on the sidewalk. She squatted beside me, trying to shield me from passers-by. We tried to explain to the few who stopped that I was not dying, just fatigued. But our Italian wasn’t good enough, and we attracted a lot of puzzled stares.
After about twenty minutes, I felt ready to walk back to the bus. Fortunately, we didn’t have long to wait. On the trip to the hotel, I tried every possible way to brace myself, but my back muscles had given their all for that day, and we alternated between Mom holding me in my seat as if I were a toddler and my leaning over with my head between my knees.
Back in our room at the hotel, Mom ran a bath while I lay down. Warm water was a great kindness to my muscles in any state of pain or fatigue. It felt particularly good that evening; but as I lay soaking I suddenly began to cry. I didn’t even know what it was about, but the more I tried to stop the more the sobs came.
Mom had never witnessed one of my post-polio crying bouts, and came running into the bathroom. She bent over the tub, asking me what was wrong, telling me it would be all right, trying every way she could to calm me. I felt ridiculous; but there was no way I could get enough breath even to tell her that it was about nothing at all. Or that perhaps it was about everything.
Afterward, when I could talk again, we agreed that I had not been ready to leave the cocoon, even to make a short bus trip. We decided to go back to Menton as soon as I felt able to travel on the train.
The manager of the du Parc welcomed us warmly and gave us our old room back. A letter from Mom to Dad at that time, in an attempt not to worry him, mentions very little about the Pisa incident, but does say, with understatement and humor: “It is a little difficult trying to get around with a gal who doesn’t have much strength but who does have a lot of luggage.”
We stayed until the weather began to chill. By that time, I was eager to get back to Paris. I had been “on vacation” for almost two months and felt that it was time to attempt a modest musical pursuit with Mademoiselle. Martha wrote that she and Marge had rented a small grand piano, and I was itching to begin trying to play again. Mom and I said a fond goodbye to paradise and set out for Life as Usual.
Chapter Six
“Household Gods” and the Oracle of Paris
We were greeted by the crisp air of fall in Paris and noise and activity everywhere. It all seemed to be telling me that important things would happen—things that could help restore my pre-polio strength and offer me priceless treasures. The treasure I sought above all was a greater understanding of Life and Art. If, in contrast to “free-floating anxiety,” there is such a state as “free-floating ecstatic anticipation,” then the latter describes my return to Paris.
Our rue Donizetti apartment was on the sixth floor of a massive yet graceful building and could be reached by a birdcage elevator. From inside the elevator, you were suspended in space as you were drawn very slowly upwards, past receding floors, stairs, and walls. You could see everything you were leaving behind and much of what you were approaching. It gave you the feeling that there was no hope of ever again reaching solid ground. The cage looked delicate as it rocked slightly to and fro. My still shaky sense of balance and the rocking of the little elevator combined to make me feel dizzy. “Just don’t look down!” Marge advised.
The building rules stated that one must not ride down in the elevator, only up; but my father had made sure that an exception would be made in my case before he had taken the apartment. In my months at rue Donizetti, I was to incur everything from puzzled to wrathful stares from the other tenants, who were not allowed to ride down in the gilded cage. With my Riviera tan, I looked healthier than anyone who had to walk down the stairs. It was my first experience with the embarrassment of having special treatment when the reason for it wasn’t obvious.
The apartment itself looked modern after the Old World charm of the Hôtel du Parc. The focal points for me were the couch-bed in the living room, where I was to sleep and rest and lounge; the grand piano against the far wall of the living room; and the fireplace, which was almost constantly in use.
“The fireplace is a necessity,” Marge explained, with a twinkle that told me she was about to explore some point of French logic. “No matter how cold it is outside, the heat will not be turned on until the first of November.” It was still October.
Marge’s Hawaiian wardrobe was not especially suitable for Paris weather, and she had decided to go to London for a couple of days “to buy some warm clothes.” Did my mother and I want to come along? I thrilled to the idea, but Pisa had taught me something. I suggested that Mom should go with Marge, and I would stay in Paris.
It was not only caution that guided my prompt decision; it was the presence of the piano. I wasn’t looking at it but I could feel it. I could hardly wait for my back muscles to recover from their insistent ache so that I could sit down and establish contact with the keyboard. I felt I had spent enough time recuperating. Now I could get to work.
“How’s the action?” I asked Marge.
“It’s moderately light and very responsive,” she assured me.
I had been lying on the couch-bed only a few minutes when I found I could endure the suspense no longer. I walked over to the piano and sat down, hands shaking a little as I felt the smooth keys under my fingertips. I put my hands over a chord and willed it to sound in that natural, lifelong, built-in process. It was as unconscious as walking. Your legs and body move automatically. You know you’re walking, but you don’t think about it. That’s the way piano playing had always been. I had heard sounds in my head, or read them on the page and then heard them in my head. My hands had then done on the keyboard what I had heard in my imagination, and what I had, in the same instant, willed t
hem to produce.
But as I willed this chord to sound, my hands didn’t feel like my hands. It wasn’t only that the keys were hard to push down. They didn’t strike simultaneously, which is the most basic feature of a chord. It felt, and sounded, as if I had tried to play the chord with my feet. I tried another chord, but it was no different.
I decided to try an arpeggio. Almost unconsciously, my hands fell into the position of the opening arpeggio of the Beethoven Fifth Concerto, which I had been working on at Fontainebleau and had been playing so gloriously in my dreams since the first days in Menton. But what came out wasn’t an arpeggio. It was a series of unconnected sounds, uncoordinated with each other or with me. There would be a little thump followed by a weak brush of the key followed by another little thump followed by something that didn’t sound at all. The thumps and brushes and spaces were not rhythmically spaced but sounded as if someone were hitting them at random. It simply bore no resemblance to piano playing or to the arpeggio I heard in my head.
But almost worse was that when one of my fingers did press down a key, it was not done with the right muscle group. I could press down a key only by doing something that I knew was wrong. It was a little like not being able to swing your leg in a walking stride—as if you had to reach down with your hands, pick up your leg, and put it in the next position. That’s what I was having to do with my fingers: pick up each one by means of a jerk of the elbow or arm or shoulder and set the finger down with a thump or a weak little collapse.
I tried one pattern after another, with the same result. It seemed unreal. These weren’t my hands. I couldn’t be producing these strange, unconnected sounds. It was as if a house you’ve lived in all your life had suddenly turned into a fun house, one of those carnival features that might more aptly be called a house of horrors. You look in a mirror that has always reflected your image, and it has turned into a concave or convex distortion. You are walking up and down crazy stairs that suddenly move from side to side or up and down, causing you to lose your balance, almost. The floor slants where you don’t expect it to, and nothing is what it seems. You are totally disoriented, in a nightmarish way. And yet this is your only house. It was too much to comprehend.
As if I had been in a fun house and would soon, with a sigh of relief, reach the exit door, I told myself that the nightmare at the keyboard would soon be over. I just needed to work regularly, though my hands were shaking so much that I had to stop even trying to find patterns. After all, hadn’t Dr. Lipsitch said that I would be playing before “too long”? And hadn’t I been away from the piano for almost three months? It was only reasonable for my hands to feel strange.
I kept telling myself that soon I’d be going out into the light again, where everything would feel normal, and I would be me again. Meanwhile, there was no choice but to try to live with the horrors so that my muscles would strengthen and my hands would feel like mine. How do you accustom yourself to living in a fun house? I didn’t know. But it may have been crucial to the retention of my sanity and optimism that I saw the phase as temporary, and thought I’d be out the exit door in no time.
“I must practice finger exercises as much as I can stand it,” I vowed. Once upon a time, such exercises had added strength and control to my natural approach to the keyboard. Now I needed something to help simulate those qualities. I placed my hand in the simplest five-finger position and tried to do the exercise in which you raise one finger and strike the key quickly, then wait, relaxing all the muscles, then strike the key again. But even here, I couldn’t move the finger up and down except by using my whole arm. The smallest joint, at the fingertip, kept collapsing, and wouldn’t even support the force of pressure applied from another muscle.
How many years, I thought, had I done such exercises? And now everything felt disconnected: the finger disconnected from the rest of me. The insistent ache in my neck and back and the breathless anxiety that welled up as I sat there seemed to echo the fun house’s eerie noises and weird laughter. How could I steady myself? Was there anything to hold onto? Any starting point at all? I looked as if for guidance at the pictures Martha had propped up on the table beside the piano—the men who had guided the talent they had found in me and helped me to develop it.
“What do I do now?” I silently asked my “household gods.”
The man in one of the photos was looking downward and to his left. It was a good likeness: the long face, the aquiline nose, and heavy, horn-rimmed glasses. His blond hair was in place, however; usually it was falling over his forehead. I couldn’t read the inscription on the photo, but knew it from memory: “To my dear pupil, Carol, with all good wishes for a bright future. Edward Bredshall.”
Naomi had sent me to study with Edward Bredshall when I was ten years old. He was the finest piano teacher in the Detroit area, and my audition with him was one of the most vivid memories of my childhood. He was the director of the Art Center Music School, housed in a dingy gray building behind the Detroit Art Institute. My parents had driven me there for an audition one evening, so long ago, and we had all been excited and a little nervous.
We were greeted by Mr. Bredshall’s secretary, Miss Smith, a round-eyed Scotswoman with a brogue I could scarcely understand. She showed us into a waiting room that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and coffee. I will never forget the moment when the rear door of the waiting room swung open and in strode one of the tallest men I had ever seen. He was pushing his horn-rimmed glasses up with his left hand as he strode toward us, and extended his right hand to my parents. He bowed as he shook hands, first with my mother and then with my father. I had never seen anyone do this. His voice was low but sharp, almost rasping, and he spoke in a slightly clipped manner. I was awed by his speech, his height, his bearing.
As Mr. Bredshall showed us into his studio, I looked around me in wonder. Two grand pianos, scratched and dusty, were piled high with music and books. Bookshelves, a desk, all available surfaces were piled high as well. There was a bouquet of dried-up flowers on the piano. As he motioned me to one of the pianos, I noticed that the white keys had black ridges on the sides. I had never seen piano keys that dirty.
As I played the first movement of a Beethoven sonata, Mr. Bredshall strode to and fro, smoking a cigarette, his heels clicking on the floor, the floor creaking with each step. I wondered if the pacing meant that he liked it or that he was bored. I tried to make it as beautiful as I could, but he kept on walking back and forth. When I had finished the first movement, he signaled me to stop. He turned to my parents.
“She’s very talented. Very talented.” He strode to the other piano and played a chord.
“Can you tell me what notes I’m playing?” So he wanted to know if I had perfect pitch. That was easy.
“A, C, D-sharp, F-sharp (or E-flat and G-flat),” I clarified, since on the piano the pair sounds the same. He played some more complicated chords, but I sorted out the notes. He nodded at me and smiled. His smile was kind, but his eyes were intense and his voice sharp—an awe-inspiring combination.
“She has an excellent ear,” he informed my parents. “Absolute pitch.” I wondered if that was the same as perfect pitch.
Mr. Bredshall asked me to sit on the couch with my parents, while he sat down in a leather armchair facing us.
“She will have to work hard,” he began, almost sternly. “We’ll work mostly on technique for a year or so.” As he explained what my playing needed, he gestured widely with both hands, alternately pushing his glasses up with an extended middle finger. He seemed unaware of the long ash on his cigarette, which would fall onto the floor or onto his suit. Occasionally, he would brush off the front of his jacket.
“Her playing is quite mature for her age,” he said at one point. I wondered if he had that impression because I had tried to play the sonata as beautifully as I could.
“Can you have her here at eight o’clock on Saturday morning?” he asked my parents. “I want to teach her when I’m fresh.”
I th
ought that was a curious statement, not realizing that he had just committed himself to getting up an hour earlier so that he could give me his utmost concentration before starting one of his long and tiring teaching days.
Mom and Dad gave me a reddish-brown music case, with my initials on it, to herald the beginning of my serious study and to hold the volumes of Hanon, Pischna, Cramer, Czerny, Dohnanyi, Clementi, McFarren: the five-finger exercises, études, scales, arpeggios, and velocity studies that Mr. Bredshall assigned to me during the first years of my work with him. He had said we would work on technique for the first year, but I wondered a little, later on, at his confidence in asking a ten-year-old to practice exercises and études three hours a day.
Somehow, though, he got the idea across to me that my technique was lagging behind my musical ability. My fingers needed to be stronger, more independent. I needed to be able to play more cleanly and with more control at greater speeds and with more endurance. I had spent hours a day at the piano ever since I could remember, but this was something entirely different from my self-directed self-expression. It was like being plunged into an athletic training that I never knew existed.
I began to worry that I had never practiced this way before. I wondered if ten-going-on-eleven was too late to develop the agility and strength Mr. Bredshall thought necessary. I felt anxious every time I sat down at the piano and opened my exercise manuals. Mr. Bredshall’s heavily penciled directions insisted on the ideal. I was afraid I could never reach it.
“Two slow beats to each note.”
“Keep steady tempo.”
“High, clean finger stroke.”
“Very flexible wrist, loose arm.”
“Fingers well curved, nail joint very firm.”
“Relax hands between measures, raise each finger high, wrist down, fingers up.”
To Play Again Page 6
